Kwan Takes The Lead After Flawless Short Program

FIGURE SKATING

March 23, 1996|By JOHN POWERS The Boston Globe

EDMONTON, Alberta - — She didn't know that Midori Ito had crashed and burned. She didn't know that Chen Lu had skated clean. Michelle Kwan didn't even bother to look at the scoreboard before she took the ice at the World Figure Skating Championships Friday.

"What good does it do?" Frank Carroll, Kwan's coach, said. "It's bad philosophy. Our philosophy is to skate well. Thinking about what other people are doing is the road to disaster."

So Kwan just thought about her own short program, skated it flawlessly and now is only four minutes away from completing the first American sweep of the men's and women's titles since Brian Boitano and Debi Thomas did it in 1986.

"This is more than I imagined," Kwan said after she'd outskated Chen, the defending champion from China, and Irina Slutskaya, the European champion from Russia. "It was more than a dream."

Only two 15-year-olds - Ukraine's Oksana Baiul (1993) and Norway's Sonja Henie (1928) - have won the women's title. But Kwan is 15 going on 25. Last year's ponytailed leaper has become a poised and polished skater whose crisp jumps are now linked by graceful threads.

Friday's short program, skated to flamenco music, was the best of her life. Kwan nailed her combination jump (triple lutz/double toe), spun out a silky double axel, then crafted an ethereal triple toe to earn a 5.9 and five 5.8s for technical merit. But it was Kwan's artistic score - seven 5.9s and two 5.8s - that was the difference between last year's girl and this year's woman.

Yet even without the artistry, Kwan would have at least been in the top two on a day when Ito, the former world champion from Japan, and France's Surya Bonaly, the three-time world runner-up, landed with a thump.

Ito, who had been reinstated after four years as a professional, hadn't competed in this event since 1991. Yet the expectations on her, particularly back home, were huge. Ito felt the pressure in her head - and in her stomach, which she clutched several times during warmups. "After five years, I was nervous and tense," she conceded. "I don't feel so well."

Yet Ito still felt she had to lead off with an extraordinarily difficult combination jump, the triple axel/double toe. Only one other woman (Tonya Harding) has ever landed the triple axel in competition, and nobody else dared try it here.

Ito splattered it so badly that she couldn't finish the combination and ended up sixth and out of contention for the gold. Then Bonaly fell on her combination, had to improvise one later and left out her triple toe.